Pubdate: Thu, 23 Oct 2014
Source: Westword (Denver, CO)
Copyright: 2014 Village Voice Media
Contact: http://www.westword.com/feedback/EmailAnEmployee?department=letters
Website: http://www.westword.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1616
Author: William Breathes

WHAT'S UP WITH THE NEW MMJ CARDS?

Dear Stoner: I saw they are getting rid of the red card for a new, 
smaller card. What's up with that?

Blue Over Red

Dear Blue: It's true. After nearly fifteen years of listening to 
patients gripe about the hassle of cumbersome paper "red cards," the 
Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment has begun 
issuing credit-card-sized medical marijuana cards. The new design 
will "significantly reduce" the need for replacements, according to 
the CDPHE. Complete with a Colorado-seal hologram, the new cards are 
a welcome change that brings us up to the mid-1990s in ID-card technology.

One thing we couldn't learn from the department is why the color 
changed from red to "purple mountain hues." We're sure the reason is 
something mundane, like the low cost of purple ink - or maybe this is 
the CDPHE's way of punking dispensaries that have paid for banners 
that read "red cards accepted."

But perhaps there's something more sinister afoot: According to some 
schools of color psychology, dark purple can create sad and depressed 
moods and cause feelings of frustration and anxiety; red, meanwhile, 
represents things like energy, strength, love and passion. We're not 
actually suggesting that the operators of the CDPHE marijuana 
registry are actively trying to make us depressed by taking away our 
red cards and replacing them with purple ones, but people love a good 
conspiracy theory.

Dear Stoner: My daughter laughed at me the other day when I played a 
Raffi tape with "Puff the Magic Dragon" for my grandkids. Is it 
really about marijuana?

Green Granny

Dear Granny: Peter, Paul and Mary have maintained for fifty years now 
that the song, written in the early 1960s, was about "childhood 
innocence" and not marijuana. But the kid's name was Jackie Paper. He 
called his dragon "Puff." They lived in Hanalei, Kauai, Hawaii (which 
in the '60s was akin to a hippie colony). They frolicked in the 
autumn mist, which could easily have been a reference to weed smoke 
from the fall harvest. Still, we can just as easily see some hippies 
in San Francisco having a deep, un-ironic debate about an innocent 
tune and then deciding that, yes, it's about weed - thus setting the 
longstanding rumor in motion.

If it is a song about smoking weed, then it's also a song about 
giving up smoking weed - Jackie Paper grows up and forgets about 
Puff, who resigns his green scales to life in a cave alone.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom